Sergeant: (Laughs, revealing that I answered correctly.) Which room is yours? You know, Kip let me in there once, and I was surprised. I thought, “These people did a really nice job!” There weren’t just blankets everywhere, like I thought there would be; you guys keep your rooms really clean! Anyway, let me tell you a little about the history of this building… (He then goes on for quite a while about the history of the building and the history of Emeryville, and then jokes about the corrupt police force.)
Police Sergeant: Anyway, if you ever need anything, just give us a call.
I never did call the Emeryville Police Department for “help” with anything, but it was reassuring to know that they weren’t waiting to pounce. We technically (albeit unofficially) had Kip’s permission to be there; the Power Machine was in legal limbo while Kip waited for a reasonable offer of compensation from the city, who planned to take ownership of the property by way of eminent domain. The trouble was that the land was worth $5 million, while the bioremediation needed (due to ground contaminants thanks to previous owner, Standard Oil) was estimated at $7 million. Because of this discrepancy, the Power Machine was tied up in the court system for years. In the meantime, Kip didn’t mind having us there because he knew that he was going to give up the building eventually anyway, so it didn’t matter what happened as long as we didn’t cause problems. Later I even met the fire chief, who kindly donated a mattress to us. In these ways, and because our situation at the Power Machine was generally so surreal, our squat managed to embody much of the magic of European squats. But certain elements of my squatting situation—and of squatting in the United States, in general—simply cannot compete with the European scene, and this is because of two primary differences: culture and the law.
European squats, also called social centers, often promise to accommodate more of the general community than just the people who live there—this is fundamentally different from most squatting efforts in the United States, which tend to focus on individuals’ need for housing. The broader culture of squatting has been undernourished in the United States, while in Europe, over the course of decades, many countries have not only fostered such a culture of squatting but have also integrated it into mainstream society. Because of this, squatting has grown to be a widely understood (if not marginally accepted) action in some places. In the United States, squatting continues to be viewed as an individualistic ploy to get something for nothing. Further, most Americans view property in a way that renders squatting, if not disruptive then, at the very least, confusing. In the most disturbing cases, property owners in some states can invoke the “castle doctrine,” which permits owners to “protect their homes against intruders,” even if that means killing them.[9] In that kind of fearful social climate, cooperation and compassion are far-flung idealisms, the fanciful daydreams of soft Americans. This is just one cultural factor that prevents Americans from launching a squatting movement in the style of Amsterdam or Barcelona: There is simply not the popular understanding or support.
Second is the legal factor, since U.S. laws are naturally different from those of various European countries. Many such places are known for their “open squatting” legislation, which allows and sometimes requires squatters to announce their presence in order to preserve their right to stay. Laws vary country by country, but—at least since my first trip to Europe—there has been a general American perception that Europeans are simply allowed to squat and Americans are not. In the past ten years, however, many of the laws and attitudes around squatting have shifted in Europe. In October 2010, Amsterdam officially criminalized the act, outlawing numerous established squats, as well as the intricate social web that connected and supported them. Throughout 2011, media outlets in Great Britain incessantly reported on sinister squatters stealing houses while owners were on vacation, which prompted Parliament to move toward a criminalization decision as well, effective September 1, 2012 (a penalty of up to six months in jail and maximum £5,000 fine). In addition, since the demolition of Ungdomshuset in 2007, more famous European squats continue to struggle against authorities and eviction, to much public outcry.
In cases such as that of the UK’s criminalization strategy, shifting cultural expectations are able to shape legal conditions. In the United States it is arguable that it works the other way around and that legal conditions predominantly shape our cultural expectations—though realistically it is a little of both: Our cultural climate partially is as it is because of the law and partially influences and reinforces the law.
All of this works to explain why, despite my efforts to imitate a Euro-style squatting utopia at the Power Machine, I was still met with individuals who scoffed at the tidiness of the squat, declaring that “squats are supposed to be dirty.” How tragic that the negative cultural expectations of American squatters have even colonized the minds of squatters themselves! European squatters, it would seem, at least have a somewhat common goal, while American squatters are all over the place: some want to be dirty and some want to be European, some want to live in their houses forever and some want to move on in a month, some want shelter and some want a home, some want to make a political statement, and some want an adventure. With such a spectrum of objectives, Americans have only managed to carve out small squatting communities here and there, while a sweeping movement remains elusive. With this in mind, I conceived the idea for this book. It seemed that there were no centralized resources for squatting in the U.S., and most squatting efforts I encountered were founded on hearsay about “squatter’s rights”—whatever those are. Similarly, there were stories that circulated about monumental, historic squatting efforts, but few people who rehashed them seemed to know many details. I hoped that by researching squatters in U.S. history to establish a cultural precedent, and by pinpointing the legal conditions and issues surrounding squatting (and other forms of property resistance), I might help to reshape both the cultural and legal attitudes toward squatting in the United States. Such a paradigm shift is requisite to any attempt at a broader squatting movement, and it almost happened in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street.
In October 2011, shortly after that movement began, I took a trip to Buffalo, New York, where activists had followed suit by establishing an “Occupy” encampment of their own. A few dozen tents had sprung up and dotted Niagara Square, the plaza across from the behemoth thirty-two-story City Hall that now towered over the mini-campsite. The plaza itself is so large that campers were more like a few ants crawling on the picnic blanket of the municipality, as compared with the “infestation” of Wall Street. For all intents and purposes, downtown Buffalo closes at 5 p.m., and so little traffic these days circles City Hall that the protesters’ visibility was minimal. Without a financial district to picket, and in the midst of a struggling local economy, the occupiers’ tactics struck me as painfully misguided. Since the city lost over half the population that its sprawling infrastructure was designed for, the slogan “Occupy Buffalo” seemed a little on the nose; the municipality has been trying to convince people to occupy Buffalo for the last fifty years!
As a Great Lakes chill whipped about the autumn air, it seemed a curious, cold, and feeble effort to camp at this downtown location. With so many empty houses genuinely abandoned in a city that is known for its brutal snow, ice, and wind, it boggled my mind that these people were trying to think up ways to safely sleep outside through the winter. Some were even talking about erecting permanent structures on the square, which I found even more baffling than Buffalonians sleeping in tents. Why, I thought, wouldn’t the occupiers occupy houses instead?
It took a few months, but Occupy movements in other cities began to have similar realizations. After all, what could be a more fitting response to a housing crisis than the direct reclamation of housing? In this way it was important for each city to examine and analyze the regional conditions that created the inequities they were battling. While occupying Wall Street was (momentarily) an effective tactic in New York City, the same protest rang hollow upstate. This is similar to the way that a European-style social center is more appropriate and viable in Madrid than it is in Memphis: Squatting itself is a tactic, and as with any tactic, we must consciously choose it as a result of our cultural and legal environment. That said, squatting—despite the dedication of this entire book to the subject—is not always a solution.[b]
